Physical development: Babies love to move, and all actions are learning activities for them. As your baby tries new skills and masters them—standing, walking, climbing—our caregiver responds to their growing independence by giving our children more complicated toys and materials to explore safely.
Social and Emotional development: From the moment infants are born, they're ready to learn through meaningful interactions with people who care for them. As your baby grows, our caregiver will be there helping them learn how to share, take turns, treat others gently, and make friends. We encourage and guide our children when necessary.
Thinking (Cognitive) skills: Your child is curious about the world around them. Your child's caregiver provides experiences that will help them learn about cause and effect, imitate adults in their play, and use their problem-solving skills.
Language development: Your child's caregiver will help them learn new words—and how conversation works—when they interact with your child and talks to him and for your child's response and then responds in turn.
TODDLERS AND TWOs
MUNCHKINS CLASSROOM
EAGLES CLASSROOM
Through Relationships with Caring Adults: Teachers help your child feel secure and important. They create strong, positive bonds with your toddler that help her gain confidence so she can explore and learn.
Through Active, Hands-on play: Young children learn best when they can see, hear, taste, touch, and smell objects safely. Through exploration, they start to see how the world works and how to solve problems.
By Connecting New Ideas and Skills to what Toddlers already Know and can Do: All of us learn best when we can link new information to what we already know. Teachers help toddlers do this so that they build knowledge. Teachers also connect learning to whatever your child is interested in, like balls, animals, or trucks!
By Exploring and Making Sense of their World: Toddlers need a lot of experiences with objects and interactions with people to begin understanding them. Play is an important way your toddler explores materials, tests ideas, and starts figuring out why something happens. Toddlers
OUR PRE-K PROGRAM
Pre-K Program at IDEAL CDC: SHINING STARS CLASS
The Ideal Pre-K Program uses the Creative Curriculum which is a play-based preschool learning tool that provides ample opportunities to balance and encourage group, shared, and independent learning experiences. This prepares the students to be school-readyacademically, emotionally, mentally, and socially. In the day-to-day activities, Science, Math, Language & Literacy are integrated as exciting experiences aligned with the standards of learning and development set by NAEYC and DCPS.
The Shining Stars class follows the District of Columbia Public Schools schedule. However, students are provided extra care during winter, spring, and summer breaks. The Pre-K class features a small class size of 16 students with 2 teachers. This 8 student to 1 teacher ratio allows the students the benefit of personalized attention. The teachers hold academic credentials in Early Childhood Development. Our Lead Teacher has been leading the Pre-K education class for 12 years.
In addition to the Creative Curriculum as the academic base, teachers also use Teaching Strategies which offers a variety of online tools to gather and organize meaningful data quickly, including online portfolios where children's work can be stored. The portfolios can be used to scaffold each child's learning; and generate comprehensive reports that can be easily customized to share with students' parents/guardians on or before Parent-Teacher conferences.
Technology isn't left behind. The Pre-K Teachers aptly use the ClassDojo App to share classroom activities such as daily class stories, announcements, and personal messages from the classroom with parents and guardians of the children. Parents/Guardians are encouraged to download the app on their phones to actively see their children's story throughout the day. The students can also create their own stories and upload them in their own portfolios.
Various enrichment classes such as American Sign Language, French Language Lessons and French Music, Dance, Yoga, and Drama. Students wear their uniforms–khaki pants/skirt and dark blue top except during special occasions like field trips, Christmas, and costume parties.
Your child's experience in the Pre-K Shining Stars class promises to stimulate growth and is guaranteed to offer you and your child the IDEAL academic enrichment you are seeking for your child.
Parents have expressed their satisfaction and support and warm encouraging words that we are glad to share-please see our "For the Parents" tab under "Shining Stars Class Parent Testimonials" here on our website!
Children's Activities Shining Stars Class: Intentional Walking around the Neighborhood
The children are given a checklist on what they are expected to see around the neighborhood. This is in-line with the on-going study about All About Me. What can you see in your neighborhood?
SKILLS Developed during the activity: Gross motor,Fine motor, Cognitive, Language and Literacy, Math, and Social Studies.
Shining Stars Class in ACTION: Children's Activities
While young children try to make sense of the world their daily interactions are very important. Our center provides the children the activities that will help them learn about Science, Technology, Math, Social studies, Language and the Arts.
We currently offer the following activities to all classrooms (Infant to Pre-K): American Sign Language Lessons
